Google will tell the EU how it plans to address antitrust concerns in January

The meeting between Google’s Eric Schmidt and the competition commissioner for the European Union appears to have been fruitful: Reuters is reporting that Google will tell the EU how it plans to resolve any antitrust concerns in January. News came that EU regulator Joaquín Almunia would be meeting with Schmidt just yesterday; the two got together in Brussels. The concern has been that Google has used its power in search to give it an unfair advantage in other areas of online commerce, an issue that has been raised by the Federal Trade Commission in the United States as well.

Google has been coming to settlement agreements in a number of areas lately, and will reportedly be changing its search practices in the US to avoid any related litigation domestically. While it’s not clear what the company will be proposing to the EU, it’s quite likely it will be doing the exact same thing in this case as well. Of course, whether the EU will find the proposal acceptable still remains to be seen.